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the hopes of Golden and Boulder interests. One of the “bolder” Boulder projects was the Denver, Utah, and Pacific which began grading through El Dorado Springs and South Boulder Canyon. A proposed divide tunnel was begun -- the dump remains at Yankee Doodle Lake on the east approach of Rollins Pass (Bollinger and Bauer 1962). The eventual selection of the Wyoming route for the Union Pacific was not for lack of efforts of the Colorado parties interested in locating the road through their state. Men such as Evans, Moffat, Loveland, and Berthoud were instrumental in seeing that every conceivable pass from the Royal Gorge to Wyoming was surveyed. The survey of the Rollins and Berthoud Pass roads was in part a search for a rail route west. General Grenville Dodge, chief surveyor of the Union Pacific, was present when Rollins Pass was rejected in 1866; his party barely escaping with their lives in a roaring November blizzard near the site of the east portal of the Moffat Tunnel (Bollinger and Bauer 1962:181). The severity of Colorado's high country winter climate, in combination with prohibitive grade restrictions through certain parts of the mountains, made selection of Colorado unacceptable to the Union Pacific. Andrew Rogers recommended a tunnel to the Union Pacific two miles south of the current tunnel, beneath Rogers Pass (which lies halfway between Rollins Pass and James Peak) to the south. The Kansas Pacific surveyed the area in 1869. By 1881 efforts were made to build the railroad west out of Denver. Four surveys were run by the Colorado Railway (a Burlington narrow gauge project) over the former Denver Utah and Pacific right-of-way in 1884-1887, from Rollins Pass to Glenwood Springs. A three mile tunnel beneath Rogers Pass was proposed and grading was begun, but halted by a locomotive engineers strike in 1887 (Bollinger and Bauer 1962). This coincided with the need of northwestern Colorado for transportation to allow development; explorers Fremont and Hayden had noted the area's mineral resources and the need for transportation to market. Various geological surveys were dispatched to appraise the area of its mineral resources in the wake of the Hayden Survey publications. In the 30 years prior to 1900, twelve to fourteen passes had been surveyed for railroad use and eighteen to twenty railroad projects undertaken, about half of which had incorporated tunnels. While some had never passed the promotion stage, many had involved actual grading. Nevertheless, rails did not cross the divide directly west of Denver, and only skeletal evidence of unsuccessful attempts remained (ibid.:183). In 1903, David Moffat finally realized the plans made a quarter century before and began construction of the Denver Northwestern and Pacific Railway. Survey activity increased with the approach of the railroad. Many survey lines were run for the Moffat, five over the hogback south of the present tunnel, three over Rollins Pass (partly over the present tunnel), and one each over Devils Thumb and Caribou (Arapahoe) Passes, which are north of Rollins Pass (ibid.). The natural barriers standing in Moffat's way were nothing compared to the human ones. The route west led through Gore Canyon, which had been surveyed by the Denver, Utah and Pacific, the Rio Grande narrow gauge (while Moffat was president), and the Union Pacific (while Jay Gould was in control). It was vital to the Union Pacific and principal stockholder E. H. Harriman to stop the DNW&P's construction; Moffat's surveyors were denied access to Gore Canyon by the Interior Department. It was 46